The first authentic polling trend of the 2020 Democratic nominating contest may now be happening. By "authentic," what I mean is a polling trend that is not merely an "announcement bump." Every candidate (well... every viable candidate) has seen some sort of boost in their polling immediately after making their official announcement, but most of these have since subsided. Now that the field is full, there will be no more such announcements to skew the polling, and any trends must thus be due to actual campaign successes or failures by the candidates. And we're seeing at least the beginnings of the first of these trends: Senator Elizabeth Warren seems to be enjoying a surge.

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We have to begin by first ignoring all the rampant criminality spewing forth from the White House -- just for the moment, mind you -- to concentrate instead on looking forward, not back. Because we're less than two weeks away from the first round of Democratic 2020 presidential primary debates, and the Democratic National Committee just announced the lineup for the two nights.

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What do you do when reality doesn't match up with how you'd like things to be? For most of us, we either pursue some form of escapism (binge-watch television, drink to excess, book tickets to the International Space Station, etc.), or we just knuckle down and admit that reality can be a real bummer at times. Hey, that's life, right? But for Donald Trump, the easiest response is to just go right ahead and attempt to redefine reality into what he'd like it to be. After all, if millions of his followers can be hoodwinked into believing something that is patently false just on his say-so, then that gives it a sort of reality all on its own, doesn't it?

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The field has been set, the cattle calls have begun, and the first debate round is looming on the horizon. In other words, the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination contest has moved into a new phase. If the polls can be believed, the people of Iowa are once again taking their "first in the nation" status seriously, and have begun examining the candidates much more closely than voters in other states. That should come as no surprise, since almost all the candidates are now investing heavily in doing well out in corn country. At least, the ones who have raised enough money to invest heavily in any state, that is.

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Well, we certainly never thought we'd use that particular lyric as a headline, but it's just too tempting to pass up this week. Because President Donald Trump just tweeted the following bit of wisdom:

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Although it is still pretty early in the process, the first phase of the 2020 Democratic nominating contest is going to hinge on one simple question: Can anybody beat Joe Biden? At this point, the former vice president has such a commanding lead that the race could wind up resembling the last hotly contested primary race -- that of the Republicans in 2016. Back then, even though most of the media refused to acknowledge it until far too late, there was one clear frontrunner all along who was challenged -- unsuccessfully -- numerous times by the underdogs. Donald Trump, of course, won that race because his support never really faltered all that much and the rest of the field was busy bickering with each other. Again, it's far too early to predict such an outcome for the 2020 Democrats, but at this point it seems pretty probable that much of the beginning of the race is going to see a lot of jockeying among the underdogs, all arguing that they'd be better than Biden in the general election.

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Last week, the Democratic National Committee quietly instituted a new rule for their first debate, which was created to avoid having a "kiddie table" debate on either of the two scheduled nights. This was a smart move, given that the entire random selection scheme was set up in the first place to avoid lumping all the leading candidates together in one debate, leaving all the struggling candidates to compete with each other in the other debate. It will still be a random selection process, but there will now be two tiers.

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It's always amusing when the inside-the-Beltway pundits realize with astonishment that they've been wrong about something. What happens is that one of them decides they know "what the American voter is thinking" and then all the rest of them stampede to the conclusion that this is really what's going on out in the heartland. They write articles and make television appearances corroborating each others' opinions, and it soon becomes virtually accepted fact among the cognoscenti. Then, reality interjects itself and their house of cards collapses -- leaving them to construct yet another false narrative to run with (which they almost always immediately do).

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Yes, we're almost at the point where every Democrat who has ever dreamed of running for president has already announced his or her intentions, and we can finally say that the field is set. Almost. We've still got three holdouts, but two of them seem likely to jump in the race within the next few weeks, and the third has announced she's not going to make up her mind until September, so even if she does join in, it isn't going to happen any time soon.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden entered the 2020 Democratic presidential field as the clear frontrunner, which is a new experience for him. In his previous two runs for president, he never got to where he is now: comfortably leading the entire pack. Biden is polling ahead of the previous frontrunner Bernie Sanders by anywhere from a few points to a healthy margin of 10 or more, and both men are far out in front of all the other contenders, who are all struggling to even manage to break into double digits in the polls.

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